Getty Josh Jacobs, Raiders
Because Week 1 ended with a rousing road win over Denver, it was a little easier to overlook the fact that Raiders running back Josh Jacobs struggled in the game, compiling only 48 yards rushing on 19 attempts, for an average of 2.5 yards per carry.
It will be much harder to mask Jacobs’ struggles coming out of Week 2, for two reasons—Jacobs had a miserable stat line, with negative-2 yards rushing on nine carries, and the Raiders got hammered in Buffalo, 38-10, on a day when little went right for the silver-and-black.
If you were frustrated by Jacobs’ play, or by the Raiders’ inability to create holes for him, or a combination of both, then take some comfort—Jacobs was frustrated, too. There were some moments when it looked like the Raiders were going to play their own brand of football, such as the opening drive of the game, in which Vegas took a 7-0 lead with a touchdown, but then, those moments quickly were swallowed up by ineptitude.
“I think that’s the thing that makes it so frustrating for me, the potential,” Jacobs said in his postgame interview. “You see flashes of how good we could really be. Just putting it all together on a consistent basis, that’s the thing we need to figure out how to do.”
It was NOT the outing that Josh Jacobs had imagined. 😬
Jacobs Pins Blame on Himself
Jacobs put the blame on himself, even if it was obvious that he just was not getting the blocks up against Buffalo’s strong defensive front. Jacobs was not pointing fingers, though, though he subtly mentioned that mistakes were made.
“I feel like I gotta do more, honestly,” Jacobs said. “I gotta do more, create plays when it’s there. Make the guys right even if they mess up on a play. … We gotta identify what we didn’t do right, address those issues and next week focus on that. And come out and be ready on Sunday for the Steelers.”
Raiders coach Josh McDaniels, though, noted that Jacobs was frequently hit in the backfield, and that is not his fault—the offensive line too often gave Bills defenders a clear path. Jacobs had three rushes that went for losses, three more that went for no gain and three that went for short yards (games of two, three and one yard).
“We’ve got to be able to block people and get the runner started,” McDaniels said in his postgame media session. “I thought a lot of times we couldn’t really even get him to the line of scrimmage without being touched. I take responsibility for all of that and I’m going to have to do a better job of figuring out what we need to do to get JJ going.”
No Moral Victories on Sunday
Jacobs was reminded that the Raiders did have to go on the road twice against potential playoff teams, and managed to come out with a 1-1 record—not a terrible result. But Jacobs, who ran for a league-best 1,653 yards last season, was not exulting in any moral victories.
“Me personally, man, I don’t ever want to lose a game,” he said. “I know that might not be realistic but I never want to lose a game. Most of the time, I don’t even want to lose a play. That’s just how I’m wired. The plays I do lose or the plays I do lose, I take that personally. I don’t have that kind of mentality. To me, I want to win them all.”
Asked if it would be best if the Raiders simply “flush” the Bills loss, Jacobs advised his teammates to do no such thing.
“We don’t need to totally flush it, we need to address where we went wrong and improve from there, address those issues and then improve from there, and then move on,” he said. “I don’t think we need to just, all right, next game, and then just flush it. I don’t think that’ll create a winning culture.”